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Even though the day was warm, he wore a long, dark coat and a hat pulled low over his eyes. Melanie had the impression he’d been watching her for several minutes, and her heart started to pound in fear. She didn’t like him watching her. He scared her. She wanted to get off the swing and run inside the house as fast as she could, but even if she could make her legs work, he blocked her path to the back door. So she sat on the swing, watching him watch her.
“Hello, Melanie,” he finally said.
His voice made creepy crawlies go up her spine. She clutched the chains of the swing.
“You need to come with me now,” he said, and Melanie shook her head. She wanted to scream for her father, but she couldn’t make her throat work, either. It was like having a bad dream with a monster coming for you and you couldn’t move.
The man walked slowly toward her. Her voice broke free then, and she screamed for her father. She screamed and screamed. “Daddy! Daddy!”
He didn’t come out of the house, though, and as the man moved even closer to her, Melanie suddenly realized that someone else had come up behind her. The second man grabbed her, and before she had time to struggle, he pressed a cloth over her mouth and nose.
And that was Melanie’s last memory until four years later.
She was sitting in that same swing, rocking herself to and fro and marveling at how easily she could touch the ground now. The back door opened, and Melanie looked up, hoping to see her father, but instead, her mother was the one who came out. At least, she thought it was her mother. She couldn’t actually remember what her mother looked like, but this woman…seemed like her mother.
The woman carried a trash bag over to one of the metal garbage cans and tossed it inside. As she turned back toward the house, she must have caught a glimpse of Melanie out of the corner of her eye. She did a double take. Stared for a moment. And then her hand flew to her heart.
“Melanie? Oh, my God…oh, my God…” She started running toward Melanie, but her legs gave out and she sank to her knees. She was screaming, crying, holding out her arms.
Melanie hesitated for just a split second, then she got off the swing and raced across the yard. Her mother grabbed her and squeezed her until she could hardly breathe.
“Oh, my baby,” her mother kept whispering over and over. “My baby, my baby!”
After a few moments, she held Melanie away from her so that she could look at her. She reached up to touch Melanie’s face, her hair. “You’re so tall! But it is you, isn’t it? Of course, it’s you.” Her gaze darkened as she glanced past Melanie. “But…how did you get here? Where have you been?”
Melanie didn’t know where she’d been or how she’d gotten back home. She didn’t know anything except that she wasn’t supposed to ask questions.
When she didn’t answer, her mother pulled her back into her arms and held on tightly. “It’s okay, baby. It doesn’t matter how you got here. Don’t even think about it. You’re home now and that’s all that matters.”
She led Melanie into the house, leaving her side only long enough to make a phone call and, a little while later, to answer the doorbell. A strange man came into the kitchen where Melanie sat eating a sandwich.
“Do you remember Dr. Collier, honey?” her mother asked anxiously. “He’s going to have a look at you, make sure you’re okay.”
The last thing Melanie wanted was to have a stranger poking and prodding her. But Dr. Collier was gentle and he didn’t do anything to upset her. Not too much, at least.
After he was finished, he motioned for Melanie’s mother to follow him out into the hallway. Melanie got up from the table and tiptoed across the room to listen at the door.
“Physically, she seems fine, but we need to take her to the hospital where she can have a thorough examination.”
“But you said she’s fine,” her mother protested.
“I said she seems to be fine. Janet, that child has been missing for four years. God only knows what she’s been through.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” her mother said softly. “Whoever had her has obviously taken good care of her. Her clothes are clean, and she looks healthy. I think someone saw her that day, a couple who couldn’t have a child of their own, perhaps, and they decided to take her. She was such a beautiful little girl, and always so beguiling. Remember how she was? Maybe their guilt finally got the better of them and they decided to bring her back to me.”
“If that’s the case, why can’t she remember them? Why can’t she answer even the simplest questions about her abductors?”
But it was as if her mother hadn’t heard him. “I’m sure they loved her very much.”
Dr. Collier didn’t say anything for a long moment, then in a low voice, “You have to call the police, you know.”
“The police—”
“Melanie was abducted. They’ll have to question her, find out what she knows about her kidnapper.”
“I don’t want to talk to the police.” Her mother started to cry again. “She’s come back to me. That’s all I care about.”
But the police did come later that day, and they talked to Melanie for a very long time. She couldn’t answer any of their questions. She couldn’t describe the men in the backyard that day. She didn’t know where they’d taken her, or what, if anything, they’d done to her. She didn’t know where she’d been for the past four years or how she’d finally gotten back home. She didn’t remember anything, not even her own face.
All she knew was that she wasn’t supposed to ask questions. Questions were forbidden.
It was late by the time the police finally left. Melanie’s mother led her back to her room and tucked her in bed. She sat on the edge, fussing with the covers as if she had to get them just right or Melanie wouldn’t be able to sleep.
“Mommy?”
Her mother put a hand to her mouth, as if overcome with emotion. Tears streamed down her face.
Melanie said contritely, “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, baby, you have nothing to be sorry about.”
“I’m sorry I made you cry.”
“These are happy tears. When you called me Mommy…it’s just been so long…I thought…” Her mother dried her eyes with the back of her hand. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. We’re together now, and that’s all that counts.”
She gathered Melanie into her arms and hugged her as if she would never let her go. When she finally did pull away, Melanie said softly, “Mommy, where’s Daddy?”
“Your daddy had to go away, honey.”
“Why?”
She bit her lip. “Because it made him too sad to stay here after you were gone.”
“Is he dead?” Melanie asked worriedly.
“No, he’s not dead. He just went somewhere far away from here.”
“Where?”
“Houston, I think. Do you know where that is?”
“Texas?”
“Yes, that’s right.” Her mother looked surprised that Melanie knew the answer.
“Why didn’t you go with him?” Melanie asked.
Her mother hesitated. “Because someone had to be here when you came back.”
Melanie thought about that. “Can he come home now?”
Her mother looked as if she was about to cry again. Melanie was suddenly sorry she’d asked about her father. “No, honey, he can’t come home. He’s…I don’t even know if he’s still in Houston. But wherever he is, I’m sure he’s fine.” She leaned down and kissed Melanie’s cheek. “Everything’s going to be okay, Melanie, I promise. I’ll take such good care of you from now on. When you wake up in the morning, I’ll fix you blueberry pancakes. That was always your favorite breakfast. Maybe later we’ll go to the zoo. Just the two of us.” Her voice broke as she smoothed her hand down Melanie’s hair. “Sleep now, my precious little girl, and when you wake up, it’ll be as if you never left.”
And her mother had tried very hard to make it so even when the police detective in charge of the case had implored her to seek professional help for Melanie. His advice had fallen on deaf ears.
“She’s not talking to a shrink,” her mother insisted. “I won’t put her through that.”
“Mrs. Stark, Melanie has been through a very traumatic experience. She’s blocked all memory of the time she was missing.”
“You seem to think that’s a bad thing,” her mother said. “I happen to think it’s a blessing. I’m glad she can’t remember what happened to her. I hope she never does.”
“But what if those memories come back to her someday? She won’t be prepared to cope—”
“I appreciate your concern, but I know what’s best for my daughter.”
And that had been the end of it. The last time Melanie had talked to the police about her abduction. She and her mother never spoke of it again, either. Her mother seemed convinced that if they pretended hard enough, those four years would just go away.
And for a while, that missing time did seem like nothing more than a bad dream. They sold the house on Long Island and moved to a little town in upstate New York. Melanie started back to school as if she’d never been absent a day, let alone four years. Wherever she’d been, she’d obviously been schooled. If anything, she was far ahead of her peers. She made new friends, played on a softball team, did all the things that normal nine-year-old girls do. On some level, she might even have been happy.
But at night, when she lay alone in her room or when she dreamed, that’s when the screams would come back to haunt her.
Melanie soon learned that putting her hands over her ears wouldn’t block the torment. Nothing would. But that didn’t stop her from trying. As she grew older, she experimented with new and increasingly destructive means to shut out the screams. There was a time during her teenage years when she’d been completely out of control.
But her mother still wouldn’t seek counselling for Melanie. She insisted that all Melanie needed was unconditional love, which she gave to her daughter in abundance. Through the truancy and all the wild parties and even rehab, her mother never judged, never scolded, never punished. If anything, she seemed to love Melanie even more.
Finally, after high school, things started to improve. In spite of her self-destructive behavior, Melanie had always excelled in her studies, and when she was accepted into a premed program at a local university, it seemed as if she’d finally gotten her life back on track. She even fell in love.
She and Andrew were inseparable all through college, but then, just weeks before graduation, he’d come to her and told her their relationship wasn’t working for him.
Melanie had been devastated. “Why?”
He gazed at her sadly. “Because what I see when I look into your eyes scares the hell out of me, Mel.”
Wounded, Melanie bit back her tears. “What do you see?”
He gave a helpless shrug. “Nothing. All I see in your eyes is emptiness.”
He’d walked out of her life that day, and just two weeks before getting her degree, Melanie had dropped out of school. For the next few years, she drifted from place to place, from job to job, from relationship to relationship.
And then six months ago, when her mother had died unexpectedly, Melanie had returned home to try to put their affairs in order. She’d come across the stack of letters while cleaning out her mother’s closet. They’d been stored in an old shoe box shoved to the farthest corner of the top shelf.
The first one had been sent from Houston more than twenty years ago. Melanie hadn’t recognized the handwriting on the envelope, and she’d hesitated to read through her mother’s personal correspondence. But then curiosity had gotten the better of her, and she’d opened the letters one by one, stunned to learn that they were all from her father. All these years, when Melanie hadn’t heard a word from him, he and her mother had kept in touch.
The early letters, written while she’d still been missing, had been outpourings of grief and guilt. Then later, after Melanie had returned, his letters took on a disturbing paranoia.
I’m sure the police are pressuring you to allow her to see a psychiatrist, but you have to remain strong. If Melanie remembers what happened to her, they’ll take her away again. And this time, they won’t let her come back.
She mustn’t remember, Janet. Melanie must never, ever remember….
As she’d read through those strange letters, Melanie had been bombarded with questions. Who were “they”? And why was her father’s fear so great that he wouldn’t even come to see her?
Nine years after Melanie’s return, the letters had stopped, leaving a ten-year gap in the correspondence. The final one had been posted from San Cristóbal, Cartéga just weeks before her mother’s death, but something seemed to be missing in the exchange, leaving Melanie to wonder if perhaps her parents had had some other form of communication in the years between the letters.
Her father now seemed to be pleading for a chance to see Melanie.
I know you don’t agree, Janet, you’ve made your position perfectly clear. But I think it’s time Melanie and I meet. She’s had such an unhappy, troubled life. I think I can help her.
Our daughter will be twenty-eight in August. A grown woman. Old enough, surely, to make her own decision about this.
If you decide to let her come—and I pray that you will—I should probably have you warn her that she won’t recognize me. Neither would you. I had my appearance altered a long time ago, but even more than the surgery, the years away from you and Melanie have taken a toll.
I can’t tell you what it would mean to me to see her again, to have one last chance to tell her how much I love her, how much I’ve always loved her. And how very sorry I am for my part in what happened to her. My guilt is a hell I live with every day of my life. Please give me this one last chance for redemption.
I want to see her, Janet. I want to see Melanie on her birthday. Tell her I’ll be waiting for her in the clouds.
Melanie rose from the bed and put the letters back in the suitcase. Shutting and locking the lid, she shoved the case back into the closet, then walked over to the window to stare out at the twilight.
It was stuffy inside the room. She opened the door for a moment, letting in a fragrant breeze, but she didn’t step out on the balcony. She was careful to remain in the shadows as she gazed down at the street.
Gooseflesh prickled along her arms, although the evening was mild. Perhaps it was the tears drying on her face that made her cold. Or the loneliness that suddenly engulfed her.
I can’t tell you what it would mean to me to see her again, to have one last chance to tell her how much I love her, how much I’ve always loved her. And how very sorry I am for my part in what happened to her.
His part in what had happened to her. His part.
What had he meant by that? Did his guilt stem from a father’s inability to protect his daughter? From the fact that if he’d stayed outside with her as she’d begged, she wouldn’t have been taken?
Or was his remorse the result of something far more sinister?
Had he been a party to her abduction? Did he know who had taken her and why? Had he known for those four years where she was and what was happening to her?
Did he know what they’d done to her?
Melanie had no idea of the answer to any of those questions, but she knew she had to find her father and confront him. She had to ask him point-blank why he felt so guilty. She had to make him look her in the eye when he told her the truth.
Then she would know.
And all those years of running and hiding and trying to block out the screams would finally be over.
Chapter Four
She wasn’t a natural blonde.
That little detail was oddly telling to Lassiter, because it was yet one more piece of evidence that Melanie Stark had secrets. Dark ones. And her real hair color was the least of them.
He stood at the foot of the bed gazing down at her. Light streaming in through the balcony window glimmered off the gold streaks in her hair and made her skin look soft and pale.
And he could see a great deal of skin. She’d kicked off the covers in her sleep, and she lay on the sheet in nothing but a light-blue tank top and white silk panties.
